Author: Laurell K. Hamilton
Series: Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter (Book 26)
Publication: Berkley (August 7, 2018)
Description: Vampire hunter Anita Blake has always managed to overcome everything she faces. But this time there’s a monster that even she doesn’t know how to fight...
A remote Florida island is the perfect wedding destination for the upcoming nuptials of Anita’s fellow U.S. Marshal and best friend, Edward. For Anita, the vacation is a welcome break, as it’s the first trip she gets to take with just wereleopards Micah and Nathaniel. But it’s not all fun and games and bachelor parties…
In this tropical paradise, Micah discovers a horrific new form of lycanthropy, one that has afflicted a single family for generations. Believed to be the result of an ancient Greek curse, it turns human bodies into a mass of snakes.
When long-simmering resentment leads to a big blowp within the wedding party, the last thing Anita needs is more drama. But it finds her anyway when women start disappearing from the hotel, and worse, her own friends and lovers are considered the prime suspects. There’s a strange power afoot that Anita has never confronted before, a force that’s rendering those around her helpless. Unable to face it on her own, Anita is willing to accept help from even the deadliest places. Help that she will most certainly regret—if she survives at all, that is…
My Thoughts: Anita and Micah have been so busy traveling for their various jobs that Nathaniel is feeling neglected. Fortunately, Edward's destination wedding in the Florida Keys with his long-time girlfriend Donna is giving them a chance for a romantic getaway. But work is threatening to interfere when first Micah's job encroaches when he's called to bring an in the closet, but out of control, shifter home from the bar where he is drowning his sorrows.
Then a young woman who has been flirting with Nathaniel and one of their bodyguards goes missing and is found gruesomely dead. One of the local detectives has decided that Nathaniel is guilty and is using a secret psychic power to get him to confess.
When a second woman is kidnapped and she's a member of Donna's wedding party, Anita, Edward, Bernardo and creepy Otto are called in to locate her using Nathaniel in his leopard form as a tracker. They find her but two other young women disappear. Bringing together Micah's case of a family that believes they have been cursed which causes some of them to grow snakes from various parts of their body and their cop with his secret psychic abilities.
Unfortunately, this situation with the kidnappings and people turning to serpents is almost overpowered by the relationship issues that are going on in the story. Besides the Anita, Micah, Nathaniel drama there is drama between Donna and Edward since she is very jealous of Anita and Edward's relationship. She is convinced, and has confided on one of her bridesmaids, that Anita and Edward are having an affair. The bridesmaid goes more than a little crazy and is determined to tell Donna's children Peter and Becca about the affair. Peter knows that there is no affair but eleven-year-old Becca needs to be protected so that her opinion of the man who has been her father since she was six isn't damaged.
This was another entertaining episode in the long-running Anita Blake series that most fans will want to read.
Favorite Quote:
"If you decide day after day to make good, positive, moral choices, they you are not evil. In fact, you would be the definition of a good person."I bought this one. You can buy your copy here.
"You're saying that she's not evil because she has decided to be good?"
This is a series that is on my want to read list!
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